Rapid progress in semiconductor device integration demands smaller and smaller wiring patterns or interconnections which connect active areas. As a result, the tolerances regarding the planeness or flatness of the semiconductor wafers used in these processes are becoming smaller and smaller. One customary way of flattening the surfaces of semiconductor wafers is to polish them with a polishing apparatus.
Such a polishing apparatus has a rotating wafer carrier assembly in contact with a polishing pad. The polishing pad is mounted on a rotating turntable which is driven by an external driving force. The polishing apparatus causes a polishing or rubbing movement between the surface of each thin semiconductor wafer and the polishing pad while dispersing a polishing slurry to obtain a chemical-mechanical polish (CMP). CMP in planarization requires the wafer surface to be brought into contact with a rotating pad saturated with either a slurry of abrasive particles or a reactive solution, or both, that attacks the wafer surface. This is done while exerting force between the wafer and polishing pad.
Generally, CMP does not uniformly polish a substrate surface and material removal proceeds unevenly. For example, it is common during oxide polishing for the edges of the wafer to be polished slower than the center of the wafer. There exists a need for a method and device for controlling the removal of material from substrate surface such as semiconductor wafers and/or chips such that a uniform surface across the substrate can be achieved.